Air travel has become an increasingly popular and affordable mode of transport. Airlines have increasingly sought to provide their passengers with improved services during the course of a flight as competition for passengers has become more intense. One significant in-flight service which is important to passengers is in-flight entertainment. This is usually provided by in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems.
Modern IFE systems provide passengers with a variety of audio and visual media options, for example, music channels, games, movies, and television programs. Users can be provided with audio or video-on-demand, meaning that each individual user may select an audio track or audio channel, or an audio-visual programme that they wish to listen to, or watch, at any given time. This is usually achieved by each passenger seat in an aircraft environment having its own visual display unit (usually in the form of an LCD display) and an appropriate jack for receiving the plug for a headset which delivers the audio content to the user.
The delivery of video-on-demand services in a large aircraft requires complex systems. The media is typically stored in digital format and delivered over a network in the aircraft via one or more media servers. The network includes seat distribution units which receive the audio visual information requested by the passengers seated in the seats that the seat distribution unit serves. The seat distribution unit provides the appropriate outputs (being analogue signals, for example) to the relevant screen displays and physical connection points for the headsets.
There are a number of physical wiring problems through the use of the seat distribution arrangement. If a passenger seat needs to be moved or changed, for example, then the wiring to the seat distribution unit needs to be changed. Furthermore, the requirement of having a physical cable that runs from a jack point in a seat armrest for a headset is also problematic. This is particularly so when passengers wish to leave their seats or move other objects in the vicinity of the seats, for example, raising or lowering a tray table, or moving objects such as drinks, plates, pillows and blankets. Finally, passenger seats such as airline seats are being made smaller and lighter, so room in and around armrests for electronics and cabling is becoming increasingly scarce.